The Irish-American rapper and singer/songwriter Everlast has been around. 'Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford' is his 5th solo record and first on his own Martyr Inc label. 'Letters Home From The Garden Of Stone' has already been issued as a free download single, followed by the release of his take on Johnny Cash's ‘Folsom Prison Blues'. The album presents an eclectic mix of blues, rock, pop and hip-hop. We all remember House Of Pain of course with their hit 'Jump Around'. It was very popular back in the day. Annoyed the hell out of me, so hopes weren't high in the Denning household for this solo album. Little did I know at the time how long a career the guy has enjoyed, or the imaginative and genre mixing production i'd get to hear. This album covers a lot of ground from serious political songs to pleasing ballads and mid-tempo pop through to hard hitting rock. The funkiness of his version of 'Folsom Prison Blues' has to be heard to be believed, it's a real winning version, if slightly too quirky for some tastes.

Also for some tastes we can pretty safely suggest the album is too long. As effective as Everlast's peculiarly distinctive gravelly voice is, the same semi-singing, semi-rapping across an hours worth of songs is indeed a little too much. Value for money is a strange thing in the music industry. Whereas for this to be a better work of art, forty minutes would be about right. At 61 minutes, it's not so much we've got filler as we've simply got too much. If listened to as designed, from start to end, interest begins to be lost. Less is nearly always more in this game, even for The Beatles 'White Album'. Hour long albums need to be damn good to survive.

Highlights then include 'Naked', his pop at the President, or at least, at 'a' President. Something approaching glam-rock beats enrich 'Die In Yer Arms'. 'Weakness' cleverly and subtly works in a Kylie Minogue sample which works unexpectedly well. The acoustic 'Friend' is a gem of a song on an album that's generally speaking lighter on acoustic numbers than many recent Everlast works. Well, silly thing to say really as this is his first album in four years. The opening two numbers make for a terrific one-two punch then, after which the album see-saws from good to average with nothing here really to be ashamed about.